If all goes according to plan — and it looks like the weather might cooperate tonight — West Virginia will get to play 18 home games at Monongalia County Ballpark. The next 11 and 14 out of 15 would be at home and the Mountaineers, who are 18-12 overall and 4-5 in the Big 12, would get an appreciable boost. They’re three games (one well-timed, well-played weekend) out of first place and two three-game series are at home against the teams in third and second place. An at-large invitation to the NCAA tournament is very realistic.

“It almost feels like a new season’s about to start,” outfielder Shaun Wood said. “It’ll be really exciting to have the new field and to have fans finally come out. We haven’t really been at home in a while — all year, actually.”

We’ve talked and we’re going to talk a lot about what that new ballpark is going to do to the game, but a lot of this is about the consumer. Fans like idea of offense, the sound of balls pinging off bats and the sight of their players wearing out a path across home plate — and don’t forget this venue will be a minor league park, and the MiLB experience is all about entertainment.

What WVU’s players and manager Randy Mazey were careful to say when they previewed the stadium was how friendly the new digs are to the patrons.

“What I noticed is the stands are right on top of the field, so it’s going to be a really good atmosphere for the fans with the players being that close and for the players having the fans right there,” Wood said. “That’s the first thing I noticed. And then the scenery up there, you look out and see all over Morgantown. It’s beautiful. You won’t get a better view around here than that.”

That’s an eyeful, and there’s so much to what greets the eye — except, oddly enough, a batter’s eye out in dead center. As for what is there, let’s begin with the obvious and what’s going on in left field.

We know by now that it’s going to be windy up there. The ballpark sits unobstructed atop the hill at University Town Center in Granville. The natural and most-common occurrence is a healthy wind out to left field, and shortstop Taylor Munden, who leads the team with eight home runs, put it to work earlier this week.

“Munden hit one the other day up there in batting practice and some of the construction guys had tape measures on their belts,” Mazey said. “They measured it 475 feet where it landed. There are going to be days it plays really small.”

Mazey said the opposite will be true, too. That same day, Wood, a 6-foot-6, 215-pound left-handed hitter Mazey said has “as much power as anybody on the team,” couldn’t get a ball over the fence. The Mountaineers say the wind shifts and the effects can vary. Balls kept flying over the fence during one intrasquad workout earlier this week, but that was a change from earlier in practice.

“A lot of the outfielders had to do a really good job staying on the balls because the wind was blowing in,” catcher Ray Guerrini said. “It does favor left field or straightaway center, but it changes. It swirls. It’s calm sometimes, too.”

More often than not, in one direction or another, it’s going to be windy. That wasn’t always so clear.

The dimensions are ordinary: 325 feet down the lines, 400 to center and 375 to the power alleys. But go back to the panorama and look at that the left third of the outfield, which is going to get a lot of action because of the wind. That double wall wall in left-center is 16 feet tall, and it has to be that way because it rests against the ticket office, which had to be placed there.

“No one’s hit one over it yet,” Munden said.

That wall is going to keep some balls in the park, and those walls are new and tight, so you’re going to see hot bounces off of there. But look to the left and the fair pole (we’re calling it the fair pole because if you hit it, it’s still a fair ball, OK). The wall starts out at 16 feet off the ground and then angles down to the ordinary eight feet. It’s a retaining wall for what’s behind it, but it’s another obstruction in the path of potential home runs and it’s another backboard for ricochets.

The big wall and the angled wall are not ordinary, and the Mountaineers like that.

In between, you’ll notice some chain-link fencing. That’s the bullpen, and there’s one in right-center, which is the only bit of symmetry in the outfield. If you remember Hawley Field, you’l remember the bullpens were in foul territory in left and right field and that players had to be aware if they were warming up of if they were playing defense and had to head over there to make plays. It was dangerous and undesirable, and it’s not longer a concern.

Anyhow, batted balls off the outfield fencing there will behave differently than the ones that hit the pads, but that’s got nothing on what’s going to happen in foul territory in left field. You have to see it to believe it, and believe it’s going to be wholly unpredictable.

Another double wall designed to retain what’s behind it, but this one is lined with bricks.

Caz, it’s in foul territory. What’s the big deal?

Take a close look and notice how close the foul line is to the wall. It’s pretty tight. Balls hooked or sliced sharply near and along that line are going to hit that turf with pace and hop up. In most parks, those balls would clear the wall and end up out of play for a ground-rule double. It’s not going to happen here. Balls are going to hit the uneven face of a hard wall and bounce back into the field in play.

“There are going to be some funky bounces out there,” Wood said. “We’ve been out there practicing bounces off the wall and trying to find out which way they’re going to go, but you don’t know really know what’s going to happen yet. You’re going to see some triples and inside-the-park home runs, for sure.”

One man’s opinion, right? Nope. Nope. The fun features in the left third of the outfield are going to be exciting, and WVU knows it.

“It’s definitely going play a huge factor in game because the opponent might not be able to react to the walls,” Munden said. “You’re going to see more triples and inside-the-parkers, I’d say, because you don’t know how the balls are going to react.”

The field is more predictable just about anywhere else, and that includes the all-turf playing surface. This was unusual to me and to many of us — me because I don’t pay a ton of attention to college baseball playing surfaces — but all-turf is increasingly ordinary and in fact preferred.

“I always get happy as an infielder going to a turf field because you get better hops,” Munden said. “You get more true hops as an infielder. Now that we have a turf field as our home field, our defensive percentages will definitely go up.”

Here’s where I thank @melmoraes for the photographs, and this expert angle shows you just how even the field is. No one’s taking chunks out of that with a slide. Rain won’t puddle muddy patches. Time won’t create undulations. It’s going to be safe and even.

(Aside: The builders did fans a solid, and here’s where you can best understand it. The seats are all below the wind plane. I think it’s going to be a few degrees colder up there, especially at night, but they sunk the park in a way to keep the wind from blowing on the backs of fans.)

Even if it’s even and normal, for casual fans, it’s weird at first to see a field with no dirt. Not on the base paths, not in the sliding area around the bags, not at home plate — though that might keep pitchers from constantly demanding clean, unscuffed baseballs after hopping one short of the plate.

Plus, turf is faster, right?

“It depends,” said catcher Ray Guerrini, who figures to have truer bounces behind the plate now, but who also may have to pay more mind to base runners on a faster track. “A lot of guys like to run on turf better than dirt. But not me. I’m still a catcher. I’m still slow.”

Small ball isn’t WVU’s style. The bats were deadened years ago, but the game was seemingly too pedestrian. The response: Lower the seams on the baseball, which makes it harder for pitchers to miss bats. Home runs are up 39 percent in this first season, and the Mountaineers average one home run a game, which is No. 16 nationally. The 30 home runs is No. 19. The slugging percentage (.435) is No. 38.

But this isn’t the product of the new park. WVU, which wasn’t sure how windy the new ballpark would be, didn’t know the balls were changing and that they’d fly like they do. Oddly enough, the projections the Mountaineers made on offense had to do with the worries they had about pitching.

Well, WVU isn’t rolling it in there. The ERA (3.81) is No. 88 and the hits per nine innings (8.61) is No. 83. The problem, of course, is the pitchers don’t get many strikeouts (6.6 per nine innings, which is No. 209 out of 301 teams) and contact isn’t going to be a good thing for WVU’s staff, which Mazey says has mostly fly-ball pitchers.

Mazey is a noted wiz with pitchers, and his pitching coach, Derek Trout, is also his recruiting coordinator, and he’s known to be good at both. Everyone’s going to need time to experience and evaluate the ballpark, to craft conclusions and to make adjustments. It would seem getting better pitchers who do and can sink the ball and keep it low is something this staff can do. The baseballs and the ballpark are going to combine to make teams more offensive, but WVU is already built that way and will continue in that direction.